Keeping Busy

Lots of appointments this week. I have to think those are going to slow down a LITTLE bit. 

I met with my radiation oncologist Wednesday. He said my skin is healing great and to keep moisturizing and stretching (I haven't been super disciplined about that) so my arm keeps a good range of motion. It hurts to stretch my arm above my head still (since surgery, really) and perhaps more stretching can help with this. He said the skin should lighten over time -- it's still super dark on that side. (I'm not really worried about that too much, to be honest). 

I also met with my plastic surgeon. We're going to meet a couple more times to make sure everything is exactly like he wants it before surgery -- he actually fills the expanders past what he actually need to give himself extra room/skin to work with in surgery. Surgery is slated for Tuesday, September 19. They said it will not be quite as bad as the first surgery -- which makes sense. Much less going on. And there will be no drains this time! Yay. My sister has offered for me to stay at her house again. She has a trip planned that weekend with her family, so hopefully we can work everything out and I can find a sitter for myself. :)  I'll need a good 1-2 weeks of absolute resting and another 2-4 weeks before I do any significant lifting. He's recommending I wait until after surgery to go back to work so my body has time to rest and get strong. Physically I'm not really ready to go back to work anyway, but that seems pretty far away. We'll see. Maybe I can do a few things here and there in the meantime. 

Today I had my heart checked. She had a tough time seeing certain parts of my heart because of my darn expanders being in the way, but from what she could see, she said everything looks normal. I had no fluid and my function was fine. She said there's a chance they will order a Mugga (? Something like that) scan so they can see everything, but because what she could see looks good, hopefully not. 

That's about it. Not as many appointments next week, which will be nice, so there will not be much to report. I'll have my infusions of Herceptin and Perjata on Thursday, as well as my first Zoladex shot. And I suppose get my prescription for Arimidex. 

I have a hard time feeling like, because I no longer feel the worst, that I should get back in action, back to work, not rest as much. I still don't feel great, am quite tired, get lightheaded, etc. Part of that is probably just my body being darn tired after a year of beating it up in various ways. Some of it might be my low hemoglobin too. Hopefully that's climbing though. I had two days of all day appointments -- being gone from 8:30 a.m. to 5 or 6 -- then yesterday afternoon could not keep my eyes open. So, I'm trying to remember to take it easy on myself, but it's difficult.

That's about it. I really hope it doesn't rain ALL weekend because boy do we get a little stir-crazy (and it's tough for Daniel to work) when James is in the house all weekend. She loved her first gymnastics class, so she's looking forward to going back tomorrow. As soon as it was over, she wanted to go across to the other class of "big kids" in progress across the lobby. It's really freaking adorable to watch a bunch of 3-year-olds jumping and balancing and attempting to do somersaults.